Delivery Platform Evaluation Rubric (K-12)
Group 5 (Rachel Bronk, Marjorie Del Mundo, Erin Gillespie, Cathy Jung, Sarah Wood)
Scenario #5
You are Social Studies (“Socials”) teachers at Vancouver’s Little Flower Academy. One of your colleagues (Mrs. McGillivray) has been using a web page to distribute materials. A number of parents are unimpressed with how she’s doing it: they’re concerned about privacy and don’t think the design of the pages is very professional. To be fair, Mrs. McGillivray has been arguing that the school needs to adopt a “proper” LMS for these sorts of things.
STEP 1 – Objectives
LMS will:
- have privacy protection.
- have a professional appearance.
- have video, audio and communication capabilities.
- be available to purchase for a “small group” (LFA) fee if purchasing is necessary.
- have support structures that are oriented for individuals not necessarily working with face to face IT support.
- ease of use with regards to posting and retrieving materials for both site creator and users.
STEP 3 – One paragraph articulation of why you included what you included, citing relevant literature.
Little Flower Academy (LFA) is an independent, all-girls Catholic high school in Vancouver consisting of approximately 460 students (LFABC, 2009). In creating our rubric, we relied heavily upon the Bates and Poole (2003) article, A Framework for Selecting and Using Technology, which outlined the SECTIONS framework. Each of the categories we have included in the rubric has a direct link to SECTIONS framework and relates to the potential needs of LFA. In this rubric, we considered essential issues for implementation of the Learning Management System (LMS) such as costs, technology, interactivity, ease of use for teachers, learners and parents, “look and feel”, administration, and functionality. For LFA, a professional looking site is desired but in the case of a LMS, professional does not necessarily go hand in hand with high cost. To ensure the needs of parents and students are met, technological support is also a considerable factor in deciding on a LMS. While LFA does not have a strong educational technology tradition, other teachers may want to buy into the LMS (not just Mrs. McGillivray) and therefore the issues of cost and support may change. We feel that by using SECTIONS as our guiding framework, we have also managed to meet the standards for educational technology outlined in the International Society for Technology in Education’s National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers (2008).
Reference List
Bates, A.W. & Poole, G. (2003). Chapter 4: a Framework for Selecting and Using Technology. In Effective Teaching with Technology in Higher Education: Foundations for Success. (pp. 77-105). San Francisco: Jossey Bass Publishers.
Little Flower Academy. (n.d.). “About > School Profile”. Retrieved May 24, 2009 from http://www.lfabc.org/pageMain.php?navigate=abouSchoolProfile
The International Society for Technology in Education. (2008). National educational technology standards and performance indicators for teachers. Retrieved May 24, 2009 from http://www.iste.org/Content/NavigationMenu/NETS/ForTeachers/2008Standards/NETS_for_Teachers_2008.htm